Medals are awarded for a wide range of achievements and service. Recipients can include members of the public, emergency services, government public servants and military personnel. Awards typically comprise a metal medal hung from a colour prescribed ribbon. Often for awards that have be conferred to a recipient more than once, medal bars can be attached above the medal on the ribbon in order to visually display the additional honour.
Award recipients will often be required to wear their medals in formal and informal ceremonial activities such as state dinners, commemorations, emergency services and military parades. In order for recipients to present their awards in an order befitting the honour they are appropriately mounted for wearing. The two methods of mounting medals are swing mounted and court mounted. The present invention relates to the later of the methods, court mounting.
Mounting is typically carried out by stitching and/or adhering the ribbon of each medal to a flat backboard commonly of a cardboard or canvas material, such that the ribbons and medals are fixed in place. Vinyl or material is regularly glued to the rear of the backboard to cover ribbon and medal stitching.
As medals tarnish easily, they need to be cleaned thoroughly to stop deterioration and pitting, which is difficult when the medals are court mounted as described above. Further, as more medals are awarded they must be added to the court mount. Cleaning of the medals or the addition of new medals typically requires removing the medals from the back board, cleaning the medals and then remounting the medals on a new back board with new lengths of ribbon. This can typically be a very expensive process with the additional ribbon or cleaning requirements, in most cases having to be conducted by jewellers or medal mounting specialists. These costs can quickly escalate even further if the labour intensive procedure to remount the medals is required.